American Life in the Roaring ‘20s€¦ · American Life in the Roaring ‘20s I. Seeing Red After World War I, America turned inward, away from the world, and started a policy of

American Life in the Roaring ‘20s

I. Seeing Red

After World War I, America turned inward, away from the world, and started a policy of “isolationism.” Americans denounced “radical” foreign ideas and “un-American” lifestyles.

The “Red Scare” of 1919-20 resulted in Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (the “Fighting Quaker”) using a series of raids to round up and arrest about 6,000 suspected Communists.

In December of 1919, 249 alleged alien radicals were deported on the Buford.

The Red Scare severely cut back free speech for a period, since the hysteria caused many people to want to eliminate any Communists and their ideas.

Some states made it illegal to merely advocate the violent overthrow of government for social change.

In 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of murdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard. The two accused were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers, and the courts may have been prejudiced against them.

In this time period, anti-foreignism (or “nativism”) was high. Liberals and radicals rallied around the two men, but they were

executed. II. Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

The new Ku Klux Klan was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-revolutionist, anti-bootlegger, anti-gambling, anti-adultery, and anti-birth control.

More simply, it was pro-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) and anti-everything else.

At its peak in the 1920s, it claimed 5 million members, mostly from the South, but it also featured a reign of hooded horror.

The KKK employed the same tactics of fear, lynchings, and intimidation.

It was stopped not by the exposure of its horrible racism, but by its money fraud.

III. Stemming the Foreign Flood

In 1920-21, some 800,000 European “New Immigrants” (mostly from the southeastern Europe regions) came to the U.S. and Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, in which

newcomers from Europe were restricted at any year to a quota, which was set at 3% of the people of their nationality who lived in the U.S. in 1910.

*This policy still really favored the Slavs and the southeastern Europeans in comparison to other groups. So, a new policy was sought… * A replacement law was found in the Immigration Act of 1924, which cut the quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of 1890, when few southeastern Europeans lived in America. * This change clearly had racial undertones beneath it (New Immigrants out, Old Immigrants in). * This act also slammed the door against Japanese immigrants. * By 1931, for the first time in history, more people left America than came here.

The immigrant tide was now cut off, but those that were in America struggled to adapt.

Labor unions in particular had difficulty in organizing because of the differences in race, culture, and nationality.

IV. The Prohibition “Experiment”

The 18th Amendment (and later, the Volstead Act) prohibited the sale of alcohol, but this law never was effectively enforced because so many people violated it.

Actually, most people thought that Prohibitio was here to stay, and this was especially popular in the Midwest and the South.

Prohibition was particularly supported by women and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, but it also posed problems from countries that produced alcohol and tried to ship it to the U.S. (illegally, of course).

In actuality, bank savings did increase, and absenteeism in industry did go down.

V. The Golden Age of Gangsterism

Prohibition led to the rise of gangs that competed to distribute liquor. In the gang wars of Chicago in the 1920s, about 500 people were

murdered, but captured criminals were rare, and convictions even rarer, since gangsters often provided false alibis for each other.

The most infamous of these gangsters was “Scarface” Al Capone, and his St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone was finally caught for tax evasion.

Gangs moved into other activities as well: prostitution, gambling, and narcotics, and by 1930, their annual profit was a whopping $12 – 18 billion.

In 1932, gangsters kidnapped the baby son of Charles Lindbergh, shocking the nation, and this event led Congress to the so-called Lindbergh Law, which allowed the death penalty to certain cases of interstate abduction.

VI. Monkey Business in Tennessee

Education made strides behind the progressive ideas of John Dewey, a professor at Columbia University who set forth principles of “learning by doing” and believed that “education for life” should be the primary goal of school.

Now, schools were no longer prisons. States also were increasingly placing minimum ages for teens

to stay in school. A massive health care program launched by the Rockefeller

Foundation practically eliminated hookworm in the South. Evolutionists were also clashing against creationists, and the prime

example of this was the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” where John T. Scopes, a high school teacher of Dayton, Tennessee, was charged with teaching evolution.

William Jennings Bryan was among those who were against him, but the one-time “boy orator” was made to sound foolish and childish by expert attorney Clarence Darrow, and five days after the end of the trial, Bryan died.

The trial proved to be inconclusive but illustrated the rift between the new and old.

Increasing numbers of Christians were starting to reconcile their differences between religion and the findings of modern science, as evidenced in the new Churches of Christ (est. 1906).

VII. The Mass-Consumption Economy

Prosperity took off in the “Roaring 20s,” despite the recession of 1920-21, and it was helped by the tax policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, which favored the rapid expansion of capital investment.

Henry Ford perfected the assembly-line production to where his famous Rouge River Plant was producing a finished automobile every ten seconds.

The automobile now provided more freedom, more luxury, and more privacy.

A new medium arose as well: advertising, which used persuasion, ploy, seduction, and sex appeal to sell merchandise.

In 1925, Bruce Barton’s bestseller The Man Nobody Knows claimed that Jesus Christ was the perfect salesman and that all advertisers should study his techniques.

Folks followed new (and dangerous) buying techniques…they bought (1) on the installment plan and (2) on credit. Both ways were capable of plunging an unexpecting consumer into debt.

Sports were buoyed by people like home-run hero Babe Ruth and boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier.

VIII. Putting America on Rubber Tires

Americans adapted, rather than invented, the gasoline engine. People like Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (famous for Oldsmobile)

developed the infant auto industry. Early cars stalled and weren’t too reliable, but eventually, cars like

the Ford Model T became cheap and easy to own. In 1929, when the bull market collapsed, 26 million motor

vehicles were registered in the United States, or 1 car per 4.9 Americans.

IX. The Advent of the Gasoline Age

The automobile spurred 6 million people to new jobs and took over the railroad as king of transportation.

New roads were constructed, the gasoline industry boomed, and America’s standard of living rose greatly.

Cars were luxuries at first, but they rapidly became necessities.

The less-attractive states lost population at an alarming rate. However, accidents killed lots of people, and by 1951,

1,000,000 people had died by the car—more than the total of Americans lost to all its previous wars combined.

Cars brought adventure, excitement, and pleasure. X. Humans Develop Wings

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first airplane for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

Aviation slowly got off the ground, and they were used a bit in World War I, but afterwards, it really took off when they became used for mail and other functions.

The first transcontinental airmail route was established form New York to San Francisco in 1920.

At first, there were many accidents and crashes, but later, safety improved.

Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean when he did it in his Spirit of St. Louis, going from New York to Paris.

XI. The Radio Revolution

In the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi had already invented wireless telegraphy and his invention was used for long distance communication in the Great War.

Then, in November of 1920, the first voice-carrying radio station began broadcasting when KDKA (in Pittsburgh) told of presidential candidate Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory.

While the automobile lured Americans away from home, the radio lured them back, as millions tuned in to hear favorites like Amos ‘n’ Andy and listen to the Eveready Hour.

Sports were further stimulated while politicians had to adjust their speaking techniques to support the new medium, and music could finally be heard electronically.

XII. Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies

Thomas Edison was one of those who invented the movie, but in 1903, the real birth of the movie came with The Great Train Robbery.

A first full-length feature was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which stunned viewers visually, but seemed to glorify the KKK in the Reconstruction era.

The first “talkie” or movie with sound was The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson.

Hollywood, California, quickly became a hot spot for movie production, due to its favorable climate and landscape.

The first movies featured nudity and female vampires called “vamps” until shocked public forced codes of censorship to be placed on them.

Propaganda movies of World War I boosted the popularity of movies. Critics, though, did bemoan the vulgarization of popular tastes

wrought by radio and movies. These new mediums led to the loss of old family and oral

traditions. Radio shows and movies seemed to lessen interaction and heighten passivity.

XIII. The Dynamic Decade

For the first time, more Americans lived in urban areas, not the rural countryside.

The birth-control movement was led by fiery Margaret Sanger, and the National Women’s Party began in 1923 to campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

The Fundamentalists of old-time religion even lost ground to the new Modernists, who liked to think that God was a “good guy” and the universe was a nice place, as opposed to the traditional view that man was a born sinner and in need of forgiveness

through Christ. A brash new group shocked many conservative older folk (who

labeled the new style as full of erotic suggestions and inappropriate). The “flaming youth” who lived this modern life were called “flappers.”

They danced new dances like the risqué “Charleston” and dressed more provocatively.

Sigmund Freud said that sexual repression was responsible for most of society’s ills, and that pleasure and health demanded sexual gratification and liberation.

Jazz was the music of flappers, and Blacks like W.C. Handy, “Jelly Roll” Morton, and Joseph King Oliver gave birth to its bee-bopping sounds.

Black pride spawned such leaders as Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance and famous for The Weary Blues, which appeared in 1926, and Marcus Garvey (founder of the United Negro Improvement Association and inspiration for the Nation of Islam).

XIV. Cultural Liberation

By the dawn of the 1920s, many of the old writers (Henry James, Henry Adams, and William Dean Howells) had died, and those that survived, like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather were popular.

Many of the new writers, though, hailed from different backgrounds (not Protestant New Englanders).

H.L. Mencken, the “Bad Boy of Baltimore,” found fault in much of America.

He wrote the monthly American Mercury. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise and The Great

Gatsby, both of which captured the society of the “Jazz Age,” including odd mix of glamour and the cruelty.

Theodore Dreiser wrote as a Realist (not Romantic) in An American Tragedy about the murder of a pregnant working girl by her socially-conscious lover.

Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms, and became a voice for the “Lost Generation”—the young folks who’d been ruined by the disillusionment of WWI.

Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio describing small-town life in America.

Sinclair Lewis disparaged small-town America in his Main Street and Babbitt.

William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying all were famous and stunning with his use

of the new, choppy “stream of consciousness” technique. Poetry also was innovative, and Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were

two great poets. Eugene O’Neill’s plays like Strange Interlude laid bare human

emotions. Other famous writers included Claude McKay and Zora Neale

Hurston. Architecture also made its marks with the designs of Frank Lloyd

Wright, Wright was an understudy of **Louis Sullivan **(of Chicago skyscraper fame) and amazed people with his use of concrete, glass, and steel and his unconventional theory that “form follows function.”

Champion of skyscrapers, the Empire State Building debuted in 1931.

XV. Wall Street’s Big Bull Market

There was much over-speculation in the 1920s, especially on Florida home properties (until a hurricane took care of that), and even during times of prosperity, many, many banks failed each year.

The whole system was built on fragile credit. The stock market’s stellar rise made headline news (and

enticed investors to drop their savings into the market’s volatility).

Secretary of the Treasury Mellon reduced the amount of taxes that rich people had to pay, thus conceivably thrusting the burden onto the middle class.

He reduced the national debt, though, but has since been accused of indirectly encouraging the Bull Market.

Whatever the case, the prosperities of the 1920s was setting up the crash that would lead to the poverty and suffering of the 1930s.

The Politics of Boom and Bust

I. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns

Newly elected President Warren G. Harding was tall, handsome, and popular, but he had a mediocre mind and he did not like to hurt people’s feelings.

Nor could he detect the corruption within his adminstration. His cabinet did have some good officials, though, such as Secretary

of State Charles Evans Hughes, who was masterful, imperious, incisive, and brilliant, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon.

However, people like Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, a scheming anti-conservationist, became secretary of the interior, and Harry M. Daugherty took over the reigns as attorney general.

These two became the worst of the scandalous cabinet members.

II. GOP Reaction at the Throttle

A good man but a weak one, Harding was the perfect front for old-fashioned politicians to set up for the nation a McKinley-style old order.

It hoped to further laissez-faire capitalism, and one of the examples of this was the Supreme Court, where Harding appointed four of the nine justices, including William H. Taft, former president of the United States.

In the early 1920s, the Supreme Court killed a federal child-labor law.

In the case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, the court reversed its ruling in the Muller v. Oregon case by invalidating a minimum wage law for women.

Under Harding, corporations could expand again, and anti-trust laws were not as enforced or downright ignored.

Men sympathetic to railroads headed the Interstate Commerce Commission.

III. The Aftermath of the War

Wartime government controls disappeared (i.e. the dismantling of the War Industries Board) and Washington returned control of railroads to private hands by the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act of 1920.

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the Shipping Board, which controlled about 1,500 vessels, to get rid of a lot of ships at bargain prices, thus reducing the size of the navy.

Labor lost much of its power, as a strike was ruthlessly broken

in 1919, and the Railway Labor Board ordered a wage cut of 12% in 1922.

Labor membership shrank by 30% from 1920 to 1930. In 1921, the Veterans’ Bureau was created to operate hospitals and

provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. Many veterans wanted the monetary compensation promised

to them for their services in the war. The Adjusted Compensation Act gave every former soldier a

paid-up insurance policy due in twenty years. It was passed by Congress twice (the second time to override president Calvin Coolidge’s veto).

IV. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens

Since America had never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, it was still technically at war with Germany, so in July of 1921, it passed a simple joint resolution ending the war.

The U.S. did not cooperate much with the League of Nations, but eventually, “unofficial observers” did participate in conferences. The lack of real participation though from the U.S. proved to doom the League.

In the Middle East, Secretary Hughes secured for American oil companies the right to share in the exploitation of the oil riches there.

Disarmament was another problem for Harding and he had to watch the actions of Japan and Britain for any possible hostile activities.

America also went on a “ship-scrapping” bonanza. The Washington “Disarmament” Conference of 1921-22

resulted in a plan that kept a 5:5:3 ratio of ships that could be held by the U.S., Britain, and Japan (in that order). This surprised many delegates at the conference (notably, the Soviet Union, which was not recognized by the U.S., was not invited and did not attend).

The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 embodied Hughes’s ideas on ship ratios, but only after Japanese received compensation.

A Four-Power Treaty, which bound Britain, Japan, France, and the U.S. to preserve the status quo in the Pacific, replaced the 20-year-old Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

The Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 kept the open door open in China.

However, despite all this apparent action, there were no limits placed on small ships, and Congress only approved the Four-Power Treaty on the condition that the U.S. was not

bound, thus effectively rendering that treaty useless. Frank B. Kellogg, Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, won the Nobel

Peace Prize for his role in the Kellogg-Briand Pact (Pact of Paris), which said that all nations that signed would no longer use war as offensive means.

V. Hiking the Tariff Higher

Businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets with cheap goods after the war, so Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law, which raised the tariff from 27% to 35%.

Presidents Harding and Coolidge, granted with authority to reduce or increase duties, and always sympathetic towards big industry, were much more prone to increasing tariffs than decreasing them.

However, this presented a problem: Europe needed to sell goods to the U.S. in order to get the money to pay back its debts, and when it could not sell, it could not repay.

VI. The Stench of Scandal

However, scandal rocked the Harding administration in 1923 when Charles R. Forbes was caught with his hand in the money bag and resigned as the head of the Veterans’ Bureau.

He and his accomplices looted the government for over $200 million.

The Teapot Dome Scandal was the most shocking of all. Albert B. Fall leased land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk

Hills, California, to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, but not until Fall had received a “loan” (actually a bribe) of $100,000 from Doheny and about three times that amount from Sinclair.

There were reports as to the underhanded doings of Attorney General Harry Daugherty, in which he was accused of the illegal sale of pardons and liquor permits.

President Harding, however, died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, of pneumonia and thrombosis, and he didn’t have to live through much of the uproar of the scandal.

VII. “Silent Cal” Coolidge

New president Calvin Coolidge was serious, calm, and never spoke more than he needed to.

A very morally clean person, he was not touched by the Harding scandals, and he proved to be a bright figure in the Republican Party.

It was ironic that in the Twenties, the “Age of Ballyhoo” or the “Jazz Age,” the U.S. had a very traditional, old-timey, and some would say boring president.

VIII. Frustrated Farmers

World War I had given the farmers prosperity, as they’d produced much food for the soldiers.

New technology in farming, such as the gasoline-engine tractor, had increased farm production dramatically.

However, after the war, these products weren’t needed, and the farmers fell into poverty.

Farmers looked for relief, and the Capper-Volstead Act, which exempted farmers’ marketing cooperatives from antitrust prosecution, and the McNary-Haugen Bill, which sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy up surpluses and sell them abroad, helped a little.

However, Coolidge vetoed the second bill, twice. IX. A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924

Coolidge was chosen by the Republicans again in 1924, while Democrats nominated John W. Davis after 102 ballots in Madison Square Garden.

The Democrats also voted by one vote NOT to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.

Senator Robert La Follette led the Progressive Party as the third party candidate.

He gained the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor and the shrinking Socialist Party, and he actually received 5 million votes.

However, Calvin Coolidge easily won the election. X. Foreign-Policy Flounderings

Isolationism continued to reign in the Coolidge era, as the Senate did not allow America to adhere to the World Court, the judicial wing of the League of Nations.

In the Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. troops were withdrawn from the Dominican Republic in 1924, but remained in Haiti from 1914 to 1934.

Coolidge took out troops from Nicaragua in 1925, and then sent them back the next year, and in 1926, he defused a situation with Mexico where the Mexicans were claiming sovereignty over oil resources.

However, Latin Americans began to resent the American dominance of them.

The European debt to America also proved tricky. XI. Unraveling the Debt Knot

Because America demanded that Britain and France pay their debts, those two nations placed huge reparation payments on Germany, which then, to pay them, printed out loads of paper money that caused inflation to soar.

At one point in October of 1923, a loaf of bread cost 480 million German marks.

Finally, in 1924, Charles Dawes engineered the Dawes Plan, which rescheduled German reparations payments and gave the way for further American private loans to Germany.

Essentially, the payments were a huge circle from the U.S. to Germany to Britain/France and back to the U.S. All told, the Americans never really gained any money or got repaid in genuine.

Also, the U.S. gained bitter enemies in France and Britain who were angry over America’s apparent greed and careless nature for others.

XII. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928

In 1928, Calvin Coolidge said, “I do not choose to run,” and his logical successor immediately became economics genius Herbert Hoover. Hoover spoke of “Rugged Individualism” which was his view that America was made great by strong, self-sufficient individuals, like the pioneers of old days trekking across the prairies, relying on no one else for help. This was the kind of folk America still needed, he said.

Hoover was opposed by New York governor Alfred E. Smith, a man who was blanketed by scandal (he drank during a Prohibitionist era and was hindered politically by being a Roman Catholic).

Radio turned out to be an important factor in the campaign, and Hoover’s personality sparkled on this new medium (compared to Smith, who sounded stupid and boyish).

Hoover had never been elected to public office before, but he had made his way up from poverty to prosperity, and believed that other people could do so as well.

There was, once again, below-the-belt hitting on both sides, as the campaign took an ugly turn, but Hoover triumphed in a landslide, with 444 electoral votes to Smith’s 87.

XIII. President Hoover’s First Moves

Hoover’s Agricultural Marketing Act, passed in June of 1929, was

designed to help the farmers help themselves, and it set up a Federal Farm Board to help the farmers.

In 1930, the Farm Board created the Grain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporation to bolster sagging prices by buying surpluses.

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!

Foreigners hated this tariff that reversed a promising worldwide trend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps.

XIV. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties

Hoover confidently predicted an end to poverty very soon, but on October 29, 1929, a devastating stock market crash caused by over-speculation and overly high stock prices built only upon non-existent credit struck the nation.

Losses, even blue-chip securities, were unbelievable as by the end of 1929, stockholders had lost over $40 million in paper values (more than the cost of World War I)!

By the end of 1930, 4 million Americans were jobless, and two years later, that number shot up to 12 million.

Over 5,000 banks collapsed in the first three years of the Great Depression.

Lines formed at soup kitchens and at homeless shelters. XV. Hooked on the Horn of Plenty

The Great Depression might have been caused by an overabundance of farm products and factory products. The nation’s capacity to produce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them.

Also, an over-expansion of credit created unsound faith in money, which is never good for business.

Britain and France’s situations, which had never fully recovered from World War I, worsened.

In 1930, a terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley and thousands of farms were sold to pay for debts.

By 1930, the depression was a national crisis, and hard-working workers had nowhere to work, thus, people turned bitter and also turned on Hoover.

*Villages of shanties and ragged shacks were called Hoovervilles and were inhabited by the people who had lost their jobs. They popped up everywhere.

XVI. Rugged Times for Rugged Individualists

Hoover unfairly received the brunt of the blame for the Great Depression, but he also did not pass measures that could have made the depression less severe than it could have been.

Critics noted that he could feed millions in Belgium (after World War I) but not millions at home in America.

He did not believe in government tampering with the economic machine and thus moving away from laissez faire, and he felt that depressions like this were simply parts of the natural economic process, known as the business cycle.

However, by the end of his term, he had started to take steps for the government to help the people.

XVII. Hoover Battles the Great Depression

Finally, Hoover voted to withdraw $2.25 billion to start projects to alleviate the suffering of the depression.

The Hoover Dam of the Colorado River was one such project. The Muscle Shoals Bill, which was designed to dam the Tennessee

River and was ultimately embraced by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), was vetoed by Hoover.

Early in 1932, Congress, responding to Hoover’s appeal, established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which became a government lending bank. This was a large step for Hoover away from laissez faire policies and toward policies the Democrats (FDR) would later employ.

However, giant corporations were the ones that benefited most from this, and the RFC was another one of the targets of Hoover’s critics.

In 1932, Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injection Act, which outlawed anti-union contracts and forbade the federal courts to issue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing (this was good for unions).

Remember, that in past depressions, the American public was often forced to “sweat it out,” not wait for government help. The trend was changing at this point, forced to do so by the Depression.

XVIII. Routing the Bonus Army in Washington

Many veterans, whom had not been paid their compensation for WWI, marched to Washington, D.C. to demand their entire bonus.

The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” erected unsanitary camps and shacks in vacant lots, creating health hazards and annoyance.

Riots followed after troops came in to intervene (after Congress tried to pass a bonus bill but failed), and many

people died. Hoover falsely charged that the force was led by riffraff and

reds (communists), and the American opinion turned even more against him.

XIX. Japanese Militarists Attack China

In September 1931, Japan, alleging provocation, invaded Manchuria and shut the Open Door.

Peaceful peoples were stunned, as this was a flagrant violation of the League of Nations covenant, and a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, was arranged.

An American actually attended, but instead of driving Japan out of China, the meeting drove Japan out of the League, thus weakening it further.

Secretary of State Henry Stimson did indicate that the U.S. probably would not interfere with a League of Nations embargo on Japan, but he was later restrained from taking action.

Since the U.S. took no effective action, the Japanese bombed Shanghai in 1932, and even then, outraged Americans didn’t do much to change the Japanese minds.

The U.S.’s lackluster actions support the notion that America’s isolationist policy was well entrenched.

XX. Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy

Hoover was deeply interested in relations south of the border, and during his term, U.S. relations with Latin America and the Caribbean improved greatly.

Since the U.S. had less money to spend, it was unable to dominate Latin America as much, and later, Franklin D. Roosevelt would build upon these policies.

The Great Depression and the New Deal

I. FDR: A Politician in a Wheelchair

In 1932, voters still had not seen any economic improvement, and they wanted a new president.

President Herbert Hoover was nominated again without much vigor and true enthusiasm, and he campaigned saying that his policies prevented the Great Depression from being worse than it was.

The Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a tall, handsome man who was the fifth cousin of famous Theodore Roosevelt and had followed in his footsteps.

FDR was suave and conciliatory while TR was pugnacious and confrontational.

FDR had been stricken with polio in 1921, and during this time, his wife, Eleanor, became his political partner.

Franklin also lost a friend in 1932 when he and Al Smith both sought the Democratic nomination.

Eleanor was to become the most active First Lady ever. II. Presidential Hopefuls of 1932

In the campaign, Roosevelt seized the opportunity to prove that he was not an invalid, and his campaign also featured an attack on Hoover’s spending (ironically, he would spend even more during his term).

The Democrats found expression in the airy tune “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and clearly, the Democrats had the advantage in this race.

III. Hoover's Humiliation in 1932

Hoover had been swept into the presidential office in 1928, but in 1932, he was swept out with equal force, as he was defeated 472 to 59.

Noteworthy was the transition of the Black vote from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

During the lame-duck period, Hoover tried to initiate some of Roosevelt’s plans, but was met by stubbornness and resistance.

Hooverites would later accuse FDR of letting the depression worsen so that he could emerge as an even more shining savior.

IV. FDR and the Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, and Reform

On Inauguration Day, FDR asserted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

He called for a nationwide bank holiday to eliminate paranoid bank withdrawals, and then he commenced with his Three R’s.

The Democratic-controlled Congress was willing to do as FDR said, and the first Hundred Days of FDR’s administration were filled with more legislative activity than ever before.

Many of the New Deal reforms had been adopted by European nations a decade before.

V. Roosevelt Manages the Money

The Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 was passed first. FDR declared a one week “bank holiday” just so everyone would calm down and stop running on the banks.

Then, Roosevelt settled down for the first of his thirty famous “Fireside Chats” with America.

The “Hundred Days Congress” passed the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act, that provided the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which insured individual deposits up to $5000, thereby eliminating the epidemic of bank failure and restoring faith to banks.

FDR then took the nation off of the gold standard and achieved controlled inflation by ordering Congress to buy gold at increasingly higher prices.

In February 1934, he announced that the U.S. would pay foreign gold at a rate of one ounce of gold per every $35 due.

VI. Roosevelt Manages the Money

The Emergency Banking Relief Act gave FDR the authority to manage banks.

FDR then went on the radio and reassured people it was safer to put money in the bank than hidden in their houses.

The Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act was passed. This provided for the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.)

to insure the money in the bank. FDR wanted to stop people from hoarding gold. He urged people to turn in gold for paper money and took the

U.S. off the gold standard. He wanted inflation, to make debt payment easier, and urged

the Treasury to buy gold with paper money. VII. A Day for Every Demagogue

Roosevelt had no qualms about using federal money to assist the unemployed, so he created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which provided employment in fresh-air government camps for about 3 million uniformed young men.

They reforested areas, fought fires, drained swamps, controlled floods, etc.

However, critics accused FDR of militarizing the youths and acting as dictator.

The Federal Emergency Relief Act looked for immediate relief rather than long-term alleviation, and its Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was headed by the zealous Harry L. Hopkins.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) made available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages.

The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) refinanced mortgages on non-farm homes and bolted down the loyalties of middle class, Democratic homeowners.

The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was established late in 1933, and it was designed to provide purely temporary jobs during the winter emergency.

Many of its tasks were rather frivolous (called “boondoggling”) and were designed for the sole purpose of making jobs.

The New Deal had its commentators. One FDR spokesperson was Father Charles Coughlin, a

Catholic priest in Michigan who at first was with FDR then disliked the New Deal and voiced his opinions on radio.

Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana was popular for his “Share the Wealth” program. Proposing “every man a king,” each family was to receive $5000, allegedly from the rich. The math of the plan was ludicrous.

His chief lieutenant was former clergyman Gerald L. K. Smith.

He was later shot by a deranged medical doctor in 1935. Dr. Francis E. Townsend of California attracted the trusting

support of perhaps 5 million “senior citizens” with his fantastic plan of each senior receiving $200 month, provided that all of it would be spent within the month. Also, this was a mathematically silly plan.

Congress also authorized the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935, which put $11 million on thousands of public buildings, bridges, and hard-surfaced roads and gave 9 million people jobs in its eight years of existence.

It also found part-time jobs for needy high school and college students and for actors, musicians, and writers.

Writer John Steinbeck counted dogs (boondoggled) in his California home of Salinas county.

VIII. New Visibility for Women

Ballots newly in hand, women struck up new roles. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the most visible, but other ladies

shone as well: Sec. of Labor Frances Perkins was the first female cabinet member and Mary McLeod Bethune headed the Office of

Minority Affairs in the NYA, the “Black Cabinet”, and founded a Florida college.

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict helped develop the “culture and personality movement” and her student Margaret Mead reached even greater heights with Coming of Age in Samoa.

Pearl S. Buck wrote a beautiful and timeless novel, The Good Earth, about a simple Chinese farmer which earned her the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938.

IX. Helping Industry and Labor

The National Recovery Administration (NRA), by far the most complicated of the programs, was designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed.

There were maximum hours of labor, minimum wages, and more rights for labor union members, including the right to choose their own representatives in bargaining.

The Philadelphia Eagles were named after this act, which received much support and patriotism, but eventually, it was shot down by the Supreme Court.

Besides too much was expected of labor, industry, and the public.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) also intended both for industrial recovery and for unemployment relief.

Headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, it aimed at long-range recovery by spending over $4 billion on some 34,000 projects that included public buildings, highways, and parkways (i.e. the Grand Coulee Dam of the Columbia River).

One of the Hundred Days Congress’s earliest acts was to legalize light wine and beer with an alcoholic content of 3.2% or less and also levied a $5 tax on every barrel manufactured.

Prohibition was officially repealed with the 21st Amendment. X. Paying Farmers Not to Farm

To help the farmers, which had been suffering ever since the end of World War I, Congress established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which paid farmers to reduce their crop acreage and would eliminate price-depressing surpluses.

However, it got off to a rocky start when it killed lots of pigs for no good reason, and paying farmers not to farm actually increased unemployment.

The Supreme Court killed it in 1936. The New Deal Congress also passed the Soil Conservation and

Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, which paid farmers to plant

soil-conserving plants like soybeans or to let their land lie fallow. The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was a more

comprehensive substitute that continued conservation payments but was accepted by the Supreme Court.

XI. Dust Bowls and Black Blizzards

After the drought of 1933, furious winds whipped up dust into the air, turning parts of Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma into the Dust Bowl and forcing many farmers to migrate west to California and inspired Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath.

The dust was very hazardous to the health and to living, creating further misery.

The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, passed in 1934, made possible a suspension of mortgage foreclosure for five years, but it was voided in 1935 by the Supreme Court.

In 1935, FDR set up the Resettlement Administration, charged with the task of removing near-farmless farmers to better land.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs was headed by John Collier who sought to reverse the forced-assimilation policies in place since the Dawes Act of 1887.

He promoted the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (the Indian “New Deal”), which encouraged tribes to preserve their culture and traditions.

Not all Indians liked it though, saying if they followed this “back-to-the-blanket” plan, they’d just become museum exhibits. 77 tribes refused to organize under its provisions (200 did).

XII. Battling Bankers and Big Business

The Federal Securities Act (“Truth in Securities Act”) required promoters to transmit to the investor sworn information regarding the soundness of their stocks and bonds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was designed as a stock watchdog administrative agency, and stock markets henceforth were to operate more as trading marts than as casinos.

In 1932, Chicagoan Samuel Insull’s multi-billion dollar financial empire had crashed, and such cases as his resulted in the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.

XIII. The TVA Harnesses the Tennessee River

The sprawling electric-power industry attracted the fire of New Deal reformers.

New Dealers accused it of gouging the public with excessive rates.

Thus, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933) sought to discover exactly how much money it took to produce electricity and then keep rates reasonable.

It constructed dams on the Tennessee River and helped the 2.5 million extremely poor citizens of the area improve their lives and their conditions.

Hydroelectric power of Tennessee would give rise to that of the West.

XIV. Housing Reform and Social Security

To speed recovery and better homes, FDR set up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1934 to stimulate the building industry through small loans to householders.

It was one of the “alphabetical” agencies to outlast the age of Roosevelt.

Congress bolstered the program in 1937 by authorizing the U.S. Housing Authority (USHA), designed to lend money to states or communities for low-cost construction.

This was the first time in American history that slum areas stopped growing.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was the greatest victory for New Dealers, since it created pension and insurance for the old-aged, the blind, the physically handicapped, delinquent children, and other dependents by taxing employees and employers.

Republicans attacked this bitterly, as such government-knows-best programs and policies that were communist leaning and penalized the rich for their success. They also opposed the pioneer spirit of “rugged individualism.”

XV. A New Deal for Labor

A rash of walkouts occurred in the summer of 1934, and after the NRA was axed, the Wagner Act (AKA, National Labor Relations Act) of 1935 took its place. The Wagner Act guaranteed the right of unions to organize and to collectively bargain with management.

Under the encouragement of a highly sympathetic National Labor Relations Board, unskilled laborers began to organize themselves into effective unions, one of which was John L. Lewis, the boss of the United Mine Workers who also succeeded in forming the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the ranks of the AF of L in 1935.

The CIO later left the AF of L and won a victory against General Motors.

The CIO also won a victory against the United States Steel Company, but smaller steel companies struck back, resulting in such incidences as the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 at the plant of the Republic Steel Company of South Chicago in which police fired upon workers, leaving scores killed or injured.

In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (AKA the “Wages and Hours Bill”) was passed, setting up minimum wage and maximum hours standards and forbidding children under the age of sixteen from working.

Roosevelt enjoyed immense support from the labor unions. In 1938, the CIO broke completely with the AF of L and renamed

itself the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the new CIO). XVI. Landon Challenges “the Champ”

The Republicans nominated Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon to run against FDR.

Landon was weak on the radio and weaker in personal campaigning, and while he criticized FDR’s spending, he also favored enough of FDR’s New Deal to be ridiculed by the Democrats as an unsure idiot.

In 1934, the American Liberty League had been formed by conservative Democrats and wealthy Republicans to fight “socialistic” New Deal schemes.

Roosevelt won in a huge landslide, getting 523 electoral votes to Landon’s 8.

FDR won primarily because he appealed to the “forgotten man,” whom he never forgot.

XVII. Nine Old Men on the Bench

The 20th Amendment had cut the lame-duck period down to six weeks, so FDR began his second term on January 20, 1937, instead of on March 4.

He controlled Congress, but the Supreme Court kept blocking his programs, so he proposed a shocking plan that would add a member to the Supreme Court for every existing member over the age of 70, for a maximum possible total of 15 total members.

For once, Congress voted against him because it did not want to lose its power.

Roosevelt was ripped for trying to become a dictator. XVIII. The Court Changes Course

FDR’s “court-packing scheme” failed, but he did get some of the justices to start to vote his way, including Owen J. Roberts, formerly regarded as a conservative.

So, FDR did achieve his purpose of getting the Supreme Court to vote his way.

However, his failure of the court-packing scheme also showed how Americans still did not wish to tamper with the sacred justice system.

XIX. Twilight of the New Deal

During Roosevelt’s first term, the depression did not disappear, and unemployment, down from 25% in 1932, was still at 15%.

In 1937, the economy took another brief downturn when the “Roosevelt Recession,” caused by government policies.

Finally, FDR embraced the policies of British economist John Maynard Keynes.

In 1937, FDR announced a bold program to stimulate the economy by planned deficit spending.

In 1939, Congress relented to FDR’s pressure and passed the Reorganization Act, which gave him limited powers for administrative reforms, including the key new Executive Office in the White House.

The Hatch Act of 1939 barred federal administrative officials, except the highest policy-making officers, from active political campaigning and soliciting.

XX. New Deal or Raw Deal?

Foes of the New Deal condemned its waste, citing that nothing had been accomplished.

Critics were shocked by the “try anything” attitude of FDR, who had increased the federal debt from $19.487 million in 1932 to $40.440 million in 1939.

It took World War II, though, to really lower unemployment. But, the war also created a heavier debt than before.

XXI. FDR’s Balance Sheet

New Dealers claimed that the New Deal had alleviated the worst of the Great Depression.

FDR also deflected popular resent against business and may have saved the American system of free enterprise, yet business tycoons hated him.

He provided bold reform without revolution. Later, he would guide the nation through a titanic war in which the democracy of the world would be at stake.